The front shear was originally written to mimic the operation of the Coil-End-Point feature only with an automated shear. Coil-End-Point does not activate unless there are enough parts to queue up to the Coil-End-Point.

Somewhere along the way, a bug or feature, was unintentionally implemented that would cause the Front Shear to still do a cut, even if there were not enough parts to queue up to the front shear location. This would happen only during Initialize Queue if there was a Scrap Length programmed. However, since it was not intentional, the front shear was queued with a negative target, the scrap that was added shifted all the good parts to the end of the blank that was cut by the front shear.

The following improvement was made. The front shear operation is not allowed to be added until Initialize queue has completed and any scrap that is required for the good parts has been added. Waiting to add the front shear then prevents the front shear from getting shifted by the scrap. This minimizes or in some cases will eliminate any scrap that the front shear may create when only a few parts need to be run that don't reach the location of the front shear.

If the user decides to cancel the front shear and program more parts, they can. The prompt puts the operator in full control. Since we always add the front shear operation, there will never be a case where the rollformer is left full of formed material due to a small order that doesn't reach the Front-Shear.